I'd say its more comparable to re-soldering a flash chip into a flash drive whenever you're finished with it. Hilarious, unnecessary, impractical, yet still completely baller.
Installing programs, for one thing. You can't just run an installation executable. Instead you've got to go into the command prompt and first remember the root password from last time you installed something on that particular device, then figure out what series of commands you need to put in to get the thing you want, which may suddenly change or not be applicable for your particular Linux build (which just so happens to be the only one where you could get the sound working on your particular hardware)... There's definitely a lot of room for improvement in the user friendliness area. Kind of the opposite of the problem with recent versions of Windows, where they're so obsessed with some bizarre idea of user friendliness and competing with Apple for the can't-do-anything user that the user has to fight a gorgon to get control over their own computer. All operating systems are a pain in the ass, because they're all terrified of the happy middle ground between user friendliness and user control, and Linux happens to be on the side of not enough user friendliness.
As is usual with ignorant Mellinials, you put down technology that was part of history. Which, if it had not been developed, we would not have the tech we have to do. Technology is like a baby, you have to learn to crawl before you can walk, and you have to learn to walk before you can run. Learn history and embrace it, because your ancestors were the ones who had to exist before you could even have been born!
I'd have loved this as a teenager - I don't think people realise how bulky carrying a decent selection of music with you could be if you have to have 1 cassette per 2 albums. I remember travelling to the USA for a holiday with my parents in 1989 - half my carry-on rucksack was full of tapes I wanted to take to listen to on the 3 week trip - if only needed the reels, I'd have much more space!
I was going to comment on this, as I seemed to remember something like this being available, but wasn't sure if it was Teac or someone else that did it. So thanks for confirming my rather hazy memory! I remember they were achingly cool to look at, but they were a bit on the expensive side, so I stuck to ordinary looking type IV tapes instead, which sounded utterly amazing on my system at the time.
wow, the Nostalgia! wonder how old all of you are. though in my latter 30s, i never lived in the western world back then, so never saw these days n real life :-/
I'm absolutely amazed at the quality of your videos. You put so much time and effort into them and I find myself interested in things I would otherwise never looked twice at, all thanks to your dedication. Fantastic channel!
You really can't understand TEAC without understanding the 'Prosumer Market' of the mid 80's to mid 90's. It was a time when tens of thousands of dollars could give you the ability that hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions) worth of equipment had provided only a decade earlier. You could use a TEAC 4 track recorder (4 tracks in one direction on stereo tape) to record 3 mics and a time code signal that would sync with your camcorders that recorded the time code on one of the audio tracks. Catalog all media and you had a 3 camera, 3 mic, time-coded shoot with full audio backup or extra tracks of ambient sounds. In the 70's that would cost you a million in gear, and in the early 90's I did it with about $25k in gear (including chroma-keying, graphic overlays, etc). Basically TEAC was a heavy player in the 'multi-media' market - a term that became meaningless as computers became fast enough, portable enough, and cheap enough to render obsolete by 2000. Those were very exciting times. :D
+mstrfool Well, that was my first company and it didn't go so well for me. I wanted to make music videos - really dreamed of being some famous music video director even though, as it turned out, music video directors never became 'famous'. In reality I wound up doing trade show videos for a juice company, wedding videos, and a cooking video that I tried to flog at flea markets and places like that, ha ha.
+mstrfool Well that was 25 years ago - I've done plenty of things since and learned a bit more with each venture. I've only recently thought of doing some video work again - but this time just as a hobby making youtube videos about my hobbies.
+mstrfool I should have my first video up sometimes this summer. I'll likely start with one a month - but nothing 'artsy' - just going to share a bit about my hobbies.
much like stacking your cassettes between hi-fi speakers, which looks ultra cool and has literally no implications regarding the integrity of the information stored on said cassettes whatsoever!
We definitely had time to do this kind of stuff in the 80's because we didn't have e-mails, phones, or even much TV programming back then. I spent a lot of time hanging out at the pool listening to cassette tapes on our boom boxes.
I still have to do a lot of work to find .FLAC files of the music i like, them download it and listen to it while i take a walk. Times have changed but music hasnt
I got one of these from a friend back in the 80’s, the case and 4 reels, and I found them really easy to load and use, I was pretty quick with the process and found carrying the 4 reels less cumbersome to carrying 4 full cassettes. I contacted TEAC in Canada at the time to ask about ordering more reels but was told it was only in Japan and most likely discontinued, so I never did get more, and seeing the price on e-bay now most likely won’t any time soon.
@Usernameowain you can read up on tape tabs here en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette#Cassette_types "Notches on the top surface of the Compact Cassette indicate its type"
Philip vB well.... I watched some videos on how tapes actually work. with modern tools it could't be *that* hard to make one. now, making one that sounds good.... that's another question entirely. Now, after watching Techmoan 's newer video about different kinds of tape... how hard would it be to get metal versions of these (metal tape) and building a mini reel-to-reel with dolby type S. it could be done....
+therealquade I think we could put 4 to 6gb on a tape in the same cassette format today and have it play full HD movies! But what's the point, we have postage stamps now for that. And they are random access.
Nice! I remember these from magazine advertisements and catalogs, where they were used all the time because they looked cool. I wanted one because they looked so cool, but this video makes me feel a lot better about never having found one!
Yeah, did look awesome...Almost retro-futuristic...Too bad it didn't load quicker and being plastic took away some of its coolness...I never saw this and once again thanks for bringing something to our attention.
+Techmoan Very cool! I've never seen one of these before. In the States, Teac did offer an enclosed "open reel" cassette better suited to the marketplace. It looked similar to this (the reels being nearly identical, but only offered in gold), however, it was fully enclosed. Overall, it wasn't the highest grade cassette, but it really scored on visual appeal (often being used in promotional photos of Teac's own equipment). Perhaps the coolest cassette ever was TDK's metal-framed metal-tape cassette. It was a cast aluminum frame with transparent polycarbonate side panels affixed with screws. Given I only have one example of each (in that black hole of 'somewhere in storage'), I wasn't inclined to do descructive testing, but I could easily see the TDK example surviving being run over by a vehicle with little more than cosmetic scratches. Both of these were pretty rare, even back in the day. Ah, memories...
It is definitely amazing that this system made it off the designer's desk and into production. Nice collectors item, though. I may look for one to load into my Nak.
Going through all of that fuzz just to play a cassette is EXACTLY what I'd love to do omg I love putting effort into something in order to listen to music!! I wish you also mentioned what bands or artists released music in these formats if there were any.
VectrexRoli that's a compliment coming from you...the king of the obscure. Everyone who is reading this who enjoys retro games (and fun) I recommend that you go straight to VectrexRoli's channel now.
I used to ask what the deal was with these cassettes, as I thought they looked cool (and still do). Finally got the answer to my question 37 years later. Thanks, Techmoan!
That's what we got for letting wymyn and mommasbois vote: before they take a roll of toilet paper from the shelf, they demand to hear at least 80% accurate prediction on 5 year marriage with it. As a result of which, we now end up with (pretend_to_be~)effective-only stuff on the market.
I used to work for TEAC in the 80s and never ever saw this. We used to get numerous calls about the cassette with the reels but somehow never saw this.
These are amazing little things. Very nice thing to have in that early 80s Era. I actually have several of these, brand new in the original packaging. Hard to find and very expensive
The reels are absolutely ADORABLE, but the whole setup for installing a reel is just too ridiculous. Regardless of whether an album (for instance) was sold on a reel at a cheaper price or that it takes up less space than a full cassette, I'd rather suffer the extra bulk of a full cassette for the time and effort saved each time I want to load a new one. I had absolutely no idea these ever existed, which is why your channel is so great!
This actually sounds like a good idea to me. The problem is that Teac didn't (or couldn't) make it easier to swap out reels. If they had solved that problem, it might have had a decent chance to take off.
I don't know how you keep finding these quirky pieces of technology, Mat. I've never heard of this one. I had my regular cassette deck which was a component in my stereo and a portable cassette deck too but somehow, this passed me by. After watching this video, I'm not sorry about that. Much too fiddly for my liking. ;) Cheers, b.
Techmoan deserves a grant from the Smithsonian. Years ago, my dad told me how he used to record using a wire recorder BUT he couldn't show me one. He's gone now and finally I have seen a wire recorder.
I remember when I bought them in electronics stores, for me these cassettes were expensive, even in the 80's, but I bought them because when the reels were in motion in a sony walkman, I imagined that I had a sophisticated electronic mechanism in the palm of my hand and that excited me .... now I look for them online and they are very expensive .. mexico city memories
Dear TEAC, please contact me regarding my design for a CD player where you have to drop the laser on the disc to start playing. And of course you have to lift it up at the end otherwise it just keeps going tha-runk tha-runk tha-runk forever.
+Mr. Lowery An open reel deck is fiddly enough, but this thing is ridiculous! Wow, some marketing people tried to push coolnes over practicality. No wonder it didn't make it.
I started getting all tense when he was feeding the tape in. Memories of snapped tapes came back as I watched him gently feed the flat tape through the labyrinthine plastic casing... stressful stuff in the 80s!
+Techmoan I guess "non-working" is the natural state of that particular Walkman after a couple years. I tried to repair mine, and the electronics inside are so cramped you'd need a microscope to solder anything. The mechanical parts are built to last until warranty expiration + 1 day. Really, some of the last-century stuff is UGLY inside as it's beautiful on the outside.
I used to see those used in advertisements for cassette decks, but I never actually new what they were beyond being expensive TEAC stuff. Thanks for the explanation.
I bought one of those new, back in the eighties. I agree with you, it looks cool but I couldn't be bothered swapping over the tapes, so it's got the same reel loaded all the time. But it still looks amusing in the tape deck!
These things go for ridiculously high prices on eBay, etc. They are nice to look at - but for that purpose (and much easier handling) I prefer those cool pure-white ceramic cassettes from Sony.
Yikes, among other problems, I'd think this would also make the heads dirty quickly because of the oils from people's fingers touching the tape leader...another advantage of standard cassettes.
I loved cassette tapes and this definitely looks great and having your own custom color and custom Caddy looks nice but if I was in a hurry it would be too much for 12 year old me at the time. I still have many cassettes I hold but never use, but I'd love to buy something like this, protective clips and carry case and all. It's a lot more "compact" than a "compact cassette"
When clicking the thumbnail I fell in love with what I saw, but now that I'm at the end I have to agree with you that it's a stupid idea, although it does look cool.
Techmoan Last update on that Foscam IPcamera in the birdhouse; oi61.tinypic.com/2eupyxj.jpg Proof that it can be done with a camera like this, although sometimes the camera crashes and it starts doing the "look around" thingy, the mother'll get mad but then after a minute she starts minding her own business again. Perhaps interesting to people who ask you for this if it's any good to keep an eye on the nature around the house.
Atka59 Thanks - I thought it was apt - I couldn't decide whether or not to preface it with the word 'Needlessly" - but I thought it might be a bit of a spoiler.
Techmoan Your decision was spot on; for the intelligent viewer, which I suspect comprises 90% of your subs, "Needlessly" might have been a bit redundant. Primarily because they would surmise that aspect at first glance anyway. Your clever reinvention of a familiar cliche syncopates cometically well off of that initial internal impression. As you obviously determined any preface to that gem would have throw it out of cadence and rendered it somewhat less pleasing.
milehigh61 Wot, no kidding. I remember misspelling "comically" and then not finding a correct spell checker choice, but I have no idea how I ended up with "cometically". Actually, having read my second comment over, I should have followed Mat's lead and just left the initial comment alone and unadulterated. Thanks for calling my attention to an obviously over thought and not well explained comment on comedic timing! LOL
Good lord, I thought swapping out and flipping over regular cassettes were a pain in the ass! Having to unspool and re-spool these little reels? Ugh! Unless one can buy empty shells or "caddies", to load once and leave it, this would drive me nuts. Nifty for novelty only. Not practical, and I doubt sound quality has much to boast either.
Blackie Nuff I think you could change the tape inside/ buy ones with higher quality tape, I think it looks kinda cool but I'd probably just put them in separate tapes of their own to avoid the tediousness of swapping them out
Honestly, if i owned a *massive* cassette collection, I think it'd end up being more economical to have a few open cassette caddies + a huge amount of these reels than a huge bundle of cassettes.
I do remember Teac keeping the idea of the reel for their basic cassettes. They were internal. It saved the tape from miss winding and rubbing against the inner wall of the cartridge.
It looks so cool I'd frame it and hang up on my wall. Maybe in some kind of motorised frame that would spin them. Now that would be a sexy display piece.
I would' mind to buying even these days the system O'cassette from TEAC, if it cupid be still available. It looks just AWESOME, even if it sounds the same like a regular CC. In television station, where I worked for 11 years, of being a single tape operator, who could save emotion of the prerecorded program on video cassette, when tape inside it was broken or damaged. Only I had a delicate hands - on knowledge, to open the case, fix the tape and put everything back again in the right order, to make "broken" cassette playable. The rest of the people were just looking of what I was doing, and they couldn't believe, that video cassette would be working perfectly back again, after my fix - up !!!! EVERYTHING comes with the little knowledge :o))
I believe you are correct that these were not offered here in the states. I seem to remember seeing them on the cover of stereo and audio/video magazines. I also believe somebody also marketed look-a-likes, cassettes that appeared to be reel to reels in a cassette case but actually were just ordinary cassette tapes. It seems that in the end, the Teac reel to reel cassettes were cool to look but nobody wanted to mess around threading tape.
Back in the day, I was always playing around with cassettes when they jammed or the felt bit fell out or the cases cracked. Fiddling around using this system would be second nature, and it looks cool, too. Shame no one thought to invent auto spooling though. Still have hundreds of cassettes - some now over 40 years old and amazingly still working! The 80's chrome dioxides especially still sound pretty good. Luckily my car, built in 2004, still has a working radio cassette deck that was fitted during production. So plenty of old stuff to listen to on trips.
I can't believe this is actually a thing that someone thought would be a good idea. It just isn't. Okay, yes, it looks cool... but I'm a practical sort of guy. 3 seconds to pull out one cassette, slap in another, press play. Done. If I had to do this every time I wanted to listen to music in the 80s, I would have stopped listening to music in the 80s, and resumed in the late 90s when CDs became popular. That said, I used to take my cassettes apart, invert the reels, and play them backwards to see what the sounded like. Thankfully, my parents only thought I was experimental, and not possessed by the devil.
These were VERY handy for a once profitable niche. Bring in your broken audio (or data) cassettes and we'd have you redubed to a new cassette in no time. We popped cases and swapped reels until this critter. All that was left was correcting tracks for breaks after repair and collecting the fee. Cassettes were the end of the market for repair and we all knew it but this little product did keep us in it a tad longer. Vinyl was our heyday. The 8 track made things more disposable and while there was work with them, it was too little. The flip side of that was the fact that the world had moved on to disposable media and when something meant value to someone they would once again be willing to have it saved (the only reason this little product was useful).
Well, regular cassettes don't need to be rewound, you just flip them over and play side two, unless you have an automatic reverse tape player and it just changes direction on it's own when it reaches the end of one side
Techmoan’s videos are pure fun for the aged audiophile while they’re informative for all regarding vintage sound gear. Now, I never saw one of the Teac O’Casse cassettes in person so other than a picture I learned more here. The idea is far out, too much in fact! The look is the best ever for a cassette however. In fact if cassettes looked more like this I think they would have lasted longer in the marketplace. I mean I’d rather look at this than even the best metal from Maxell or TDK.
I was under the impression that tape which is analog had a broader and better signal than the digital more convenient devices of today. Today most can't distinguish the difference and convenience has won the audio signal war. Watching your video made me wonder if you could expand on that since you seem to have a better understanding than myself? Enjoyable video covering this concept, yes alot of tinkering with loose tape. Thank you, John
+TruAnRksT it did....until it didn't. You see whilst 8-track tape formulations didn't really improve since the 60s, the cassette got chrome then metal, Dolby c, s, hx-pro. I've made a video about 8-tracks and one about compact cassettes...both these are in the HiFi playlist on my channel.
+chieftp LOL well it did have it's draw backs but when it was playing good? Only damaged tapes sounded "muffled", back during the Vietnam conflict I had a portable that used eight D cells and it really cranked out the jams. In stereo with speakers that could be separated up to 6 feet. Later I had an 8-track in my car that made other car radios at the time sound like shit. It had a whopping 8W per channel! LOL. Yes I agree there were some technical issues with the format but the actual tracks themselves if separated from the rest of the tape, for some reason sounded better than the tape used in commercial cassettes. Cassette tapes have always sounded a little flat and stage-less to me. All varieties.
Wow. I remember when I would have to take apart cassettes that had gotten messed up, and put them back together again. With this thing, I could have the pleasure of doing that every time I wanted to play a different album. What a great idea! They should have included a pencil as a winding tool though!
I remember you could buy the reel to reel tapes but you did not swap them out like these as they were sealed units, I got them because they looked much better in my system than normal tapes.
I got the Teac Reels in a closed cassette. I like it.Threading the tape is a pain at the bottom, which I have experience with repairing and swapping reels in regular cassettes.
Wow! That thing looks like some hipster's attempt at making cassette tapes relevant again. Seriously, you could have told me they were funding it on indiegogo or kickstarter and I would have believed you.
bummer6 i owned one of those things back in the 80's. It died out because it is, was, and will.always be a stupid idea. The whole point of cassette was not to have to go through all this nonsense. It came and went. And it's really pointlessness when TDK and BASF (if you had the right machine) had the best tape.
+Leo Berger ...and that's exactly the reason why this video exists. No point making a video about something everyone has seen and used.....don't see too much demand for a videos about a Scotch 180 min VHS tape.
![CHILE vs. BRASIL [1-2] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 9](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5ObJt_71AYc/mqdefault.jpg)
That's like replacing usb cords with beautiful golden wires you can conveniently solder between your devices
I'd say its more comparable to re-soldering a flash chip into a flash drive whenever you're finished with it. Hilarious, unnecessary, impractical, yet still completely baller.
Combining the downsides of a compact cassette with the downsides of a reel to reel tape - sounds like an EXTREME winning team....
+Pascal ”Le Bakala” Gienger Ha-ha! Bullseye
+Pascal „Le Bakala” Gienger What downsides of a compact cassette? Cassette has no downsides.
I can't imagine for the life of me how that system just didn't take off!
@@darek4488 1/8" tape vs 1/4" on home reel to reel, plus a slower tape speed.
The convenience of cassettes without any of the convenience.
all the fun of fiddling with technology with the simplicity of a cassette tape
But ten times the cool factor!
This would make a perfect gift for Shelden Cooper. He likes non user friendly things. Like his mind for example. And Linux.
What's user unfriendly about Linux?
Installing programs, for one thing. You can't just run an installation executable. Instead you've got to go into the command prompt and first remember the root password from last time you installed something on that particular device, then figure out what series of commands you need to put in to get the thing you want, which may suddenly change or not be applicable for your particular Linux build (which just so happens to be the only one where you could get the sound working on your particular hardware)... There's definitely a lot of room for improvement in the user friendliness area. Kind of the opposite of the problem with recent versions of Windows, where they're so obsessed with some bizarre idea of user friendliness and competing with Apple for the can't-do-anything user that the user has to fight a gorgon to get control over their own computer.
All operating systems are a pain in the ass, because they're all terrified of the happy middle ground between user friendliness and user control, and Linux happens to be on the side of not enough user friendliness.
"Such a bloody ludicrous stupid idea" that would probably do well on kickstarter.
Joshua Pearce lol love this comment! 😂😂
As is usual with ignorant Mellinials, you put down technology that was part of history. Which, if it had not been developed, we would not have the tech we have to do. Technology is like a baby, you have to learn to crawl before you can walk, and you have to learn to walk before you can run. Learn history and embrace it, because your ancestors were the ones who had to exist before you could even have been born!
@@thorlo1278 Jesus Christ this is a self righteous and absorbed comment
@@thorlo1278 Err you do realize most millennials grew up using cassette's and VCR's don't you mate?
@Константин Родчанин He's probably barely 45.
I'm always impressed by the beautiful and very-high-quality engineering that goes into so much of the old analouge stuff.
I had a go on an anal louge once. Never again, lemme tell you!
I was sore for weeks.
"If you thought reel to reel was a pain in the ass now, wait till we miniaturize it"🔍
This is probably one of the coolest things ive seen that I dont want to own.
My head stops working when I think about this thing.
I'd have loved this as a teenager - I don't think people realise how bulky carrying a decent selection of music with you could be if you have to have 1 cassette per 2 albums. I remember travelling to the USA for a holiday with my parents in 1989 - half my carry-on rucksack was full of tapes I wanted to take to listen to on the 3 week trip - if only needed the reels, I'd have much more space!
Teac made unremovable versions of those too. I remember how cool they looked in my $300 cassette deck. lol
I was going to comment on this, as I seemed to remember something like this being available, but wasn't sure if it was Teac or someone else that did it. So thanks for confirming my rather hazy memory! I remember they were achingly cool to look at, but they were a bit on the expensive side, so I stuck to ordinary looking type IV tapes instead, which sounded utterly amazing on my system at the time.
i had a few and I loved them. They looked so great!
Still have a couple of these somewhere. I had them for my BBC computer and brought them from W H Smiths or John Menzies way back in 83/84 I think.
wow, the Nostalgia! wonder how old all of you are.
though in my latter 30s, i never lived in the western world back then, so never saw these days n real life :-/
YES! I had a few. They looked cool. They were still cassettes, but...
Wow, that thing is beautiful in action.
So it's like repairing a broken cassette every time you use it. :)
4G3NTanon yes
But easier to repair if the tape ever breaks vs opening up a normal cassette. Grrr!
I'm absolutely amazed at the quality of your videos. You put so much time and effort into them and I find myself interested in things I would otherwise never looked twice at, all thanks to your dedication. Fantastic channel!
You really can't understand TEAC without understanding the 'Prosumer Market' of the mid 80's to mid 90's. It was a time when tens of thousands of dollars could give you the ability that hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions) worth of equipment had provided only a decade earlier. You could use a TEAC 4 track recorder (4 tracks in one direction on stereo tape) to record 3 mics and a time code signal that would sync with your camcorders that recorded the time code on one of the audio tracks.
Catalog all media and you had a 3 camera, 3 mic, time-coded shoot with full audio backup or extra tracks of ambient sounds. In the 70's that would cost you a million in gear, and in the early 90's I did it with about $25k in gear (including chroma-keying, graphic overlays, etc).
Basically TEAC was a heavy player in the 'multi-media' market - a term that became meaningless as computers became fast enough, portable enough, and cheap enough to render obsolete by 2000. Those were very exciting times. :D
Thank you for this addendum, it helps greatly in understanding this phenomenon.
+mstrfool Well, that was my first company and it didn't go so well for me. I wanted to make music videos - really dreamed of being some famous music video director even though, as it turned out, music video directors never became 'famous'. In reality I wound up doing trade show videos for a juice company, wedding videos, and a cooking video that I tried to flog at flea markets and places like that, ha ha.
+mstrfool Well that was 25 years ago - I've done plenty of things since and learned a bit more with each venture. I've only recently thought of doing some video work again - but this time just as a hobby making youtube videos about my hobbies.
+mstrfool I should have my first video up sometimes this summer. I'll likely start with one a month - but nothing 'artsy' - just going to share a bit about my hobbies.
Instead of that lug at the end, it should all just snap together with really strong magnets. I can see absolutely no problems with this idea at all.
much like stacking your cassettes between hi-fi speakers, which looks ultra cool and has literally no implications regarding the integrity of the information stored on said cassettes whatsoever!
DO NOT DO THIS WHATSOEVER!!!! Magnetic tapes hate strong magnets (or magnets in general)
Vlad Tomoiaga
yes Vlad, we know, that's the joke.
Did the joke make a sound as it flew over your head?
Mikail Elchanovanich Yeah, I know 😁
We definitely had time to do this kind of stuff in the 80's because we didn't have e-mails, phones, or even much TV programming back then. I spent a lot of time hanging out at the pool listening to cassette tapes on our boom boxes.
So instead of wasting time arguing with people online and looking at cat pictures, you wasted time listening to pop music. Times sure have changed.
Much time was also wasted on watching TV...
I still have to do a lot of work to find .FLAC files of the music i like, them download it and listen to it while i take a walk.
Times have changed but music hasnt
There was not much television programming in the 80s?
I got one of these from a friend back in the 80’s, the case and 4 reels, and I found them really easy to load and use, I was pretty quick with the process and found carrying the 4 reels less cumbersome to carrying 4 full cassettes. I contacted TEAC in Canada at the time to ask about ordering more reels but was told it was only in Japan and most likely discontinued, so I never did get more, and seeing the price on e-bay now most likely won’t any time soon.
@Usernameowain you can read up on tape tabs here en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Cassette#Cassette_types
"Notches on the top surface of the Compact Cassette indicate its type"
Techmoan I would much rather have a tiny reel to reel machine sitting on my desk.
+therealquade Oh my God. When I think about a little machine to have these in there open... That would be way cooler.
+Philip vB
DAMN RIGHT.
Philip vB well.... I watched some videos on how tapes actually work. with modern tools it could't be *that* hard to make one. now, making one that sounds good.... that's another question entirely.
Now, after watching Techmoan 's newer video about different kinds of tape... how hard would it be to get metal versions of these (metal tape) and building a mini reel-to-reel with dolby type S. it could be done....
+therealquade
I think we could put 4 to 6gb on a tape in the same cassette format today and have it play full HD movies! But what's the point, we have postage stamps now for that. And they are random access.
Nice! I remember these from magazine advertisements and catalogs, where they were used all the time because they looked cool. I wanted one because they looked so cool, but this video makes me feel a lot better about never having found one!
+Bruce Elliott No kidding! What a pain in the ass to use! Looks cool, sure, but really impractical, no wonder it flopped.
Yeah, did look awesome...Almost retro-futuristic...Too bad it didn't load quicker and being plastic took away some of its coolness...I never saw this and once again thanks for bringing something to our attention.
I want it for the looks...
+Techmoan Very cool! I've never seen one of these before. In the States, Teac did offer an enclosed "open reel" cassette better suited to the marketplace. It looked similar to this (the reels being nearly identical, but only offered in gold), however, it was fully enclosed. Overall, it wasn't the highest grade cassette, but it really scored on visual appeal (often being used in promotional photos of Teac's own equipment). Perhaps the coolest cassette ever was TDK's metal-framed metal-tape cassette. It was a cast aluminum frame with transparent polycarbonate side panels affixed with screws. Given I only have one example of each (in that black hole of 'somewhere in storage'), I wasn't inclined to do descructive testing, but I could easily see the TDK example surviving being run over by a vehicle with little more than cosmetic scratches. Both of these were pretty rare, even back in the day. Ah, memories...
It is definitely amazing that this system made it off the designer's desk and into production. Nice collectors item, though. I may look for one to load into my Nak.
People need to invent better ways of making things difficult. That was a good start :))
The difference between Teac O'casse and Xbox One: The O'casse could play music when it launched.
Ciprian Amarandei Elect a Libtard or Democrap and they will manage and complicate your life.
All the convenience of reel-to-reel, with all the sound quality of a birthday card under water! A win-win!
I didn't even realize this video is 7 years old. It seems that you perfected making videos years ago
I'm really liking these vintage audio equipment videos. I've always been fascinated with things like this :o)
I can imagine driving down the street in my car in 1985 trying to feed the tape in the caddy...lmfao.
i think most people just buy these for decoration
I never new anyone who actually bought them at all! I was fairly plugged in to audio in the '80s and never knew this existed.
@@garyblack8717 these were probably never popular outside Japan
Going through all of that fuzz just to play a cassette is EXACTLY what I'd love to do omg I love putting effort into something in order to listen to music!! I wish you also mentioned what bands or artists released music in these formats if there were any.
+thesimstecoo There were none - it's just a blank tape.
These are so much cooler than MP3 etc.
I imagine Japanese kids had great fun with these while they lasted, I know I would’ve.
I know it’s a lot of mucking about but I love this, the precision and the quality look superb
Always impressive what you find out there, never seen that before.
VectrexRoli that's a compliment coming from you...the king of the obscure. Everyone who is reading this who enjoys retro games (and fun) I recommend that you go straight to VectrexRoli's channel now.
I used to ask what the deal was with these cassettes, as I thought they looked cool (and still do). Finally got the answer to my question 37 years later. Thanks, Techmoan!
"...makes the world a duller place." love that comment!
That's what we got for letting wymyn and mommasbois vote: before they take a roll of toilet paper from the shelf, they demand to hear at least 80% accurate prediction on 5 year marriage with it. As a result of which, we now end up with (pretend_to_be~)effective-only stuff on the market.
I used to work for TEAC in the 80s and never ever saw this. We used to get numerous calls about the cassette with the reels but somehow never saw this.
These are amazing little things. Very nice thing to have in that early 80s Era.
I actually have several of these, brand new in the original packaging.
Hard to find and very expensive
The reels are absolutely ADORABLE, but the whole setup for installing a reel is just too ridiculous. Regardless of whether an album (for instance) was sold on a reel at a cheaper price or that it takes up less space than a full cassette, I'd rather suffer the extra bulk of a full cassette for the time and effort saved each time I want to load a new one. I had absolutely no idea these ever existed, which is why your channel is so great!
This actually sounds like a good idea to me. The problem is that Teac didn't (or couldn't) make it easier to swap out reels. If they had solved that problem, it might have had a decent chance to take off.
This would be cool for that one special recording you wanted to cherish.
I don't know how you keep finding these quirky pieces of technology, Mat. I've never heard of this one. I had my regular cassette deck which was a component in my stereo and a portable cassette deck too but somehow, this passed me by. After watching this video, I'm not sorry about that. Much too fiddly for my liking. ;)
Cheers, b.
biggles1024 unusual things are getting more expensive and harder to find. I've got a couple more planned, but after that I'm out of ideas.
Techmoan Is a wire recorder one of those ?
custardo that's a bit too hard to come by, even for me.
Techmoan deserves a grant from the Smithsonian. Years ago, my dad told me how he used to record using a wire recorder BUT he couldn't show me one. He's gone now and finally I have seen a wire recorder.
I remember when I bought them in electronics stores, for me these cassettes were expensive, even in the 80's, but I bought them because when the reels were in motion in a sony walkman, I imagined that I had a sophisticated electronic mechanism in the palm of my hand and that excited me .... now I look for them online and they are very expensive .. mexico city memories
Dear TEAC, please contact me regarding my design for a CD player where you have to drop the laser on the disc to start playing. And of course you have to lift it up at the end otherwise it just keeps going tha-runk tha-runk tha-runk forever.
As a kid, I always wanted one of these sooooo bad. These used to model cassette players in catalogs because they looked so slick in the photography.
Great video!
You're creepy
Using that golden Walkman with an O'Casse as a datasette for your C64 or ZX Spectrum would look absolutely dope
They seem really fiddly and annoying to use but dam the look so cool I want one :)
i had a few of these in the 80s, they just looked cool and made your audio system look more high end
**see the video** Oh God I must have it!
**check the prices** Never mind...
"now a'days people have twitter, but back in the 80s teac thought people would like to start spooling their own cassettes" gets me every time!!
it's amazing such a complicated hassle actually made it to the consumer market!
+Mr. Lowery An open reel deck is fiddly enough, but this thing is ridiculous! Wow, some marketing people tried to push coolnes over practicality. No wonder it didn't make it.
I started getting all tense when he was feeding the tape in. Memories of snapped tapes came back as I watched him gently feed the flat tape through the labyrinthine plastic casing... stressful stuff in the 80s!
You remind me of James May.
Subscribed.
i thought the same
Just recently started watching this channel, and immediately thought the same thing, sounds just like James May
Shit, now I can't unhear it! I've been watching Techmoan for YEARS
I got 2 of these because of your video... it is complicated to change, but it's the best looking reel2reel cassette tape I saw yet...
I'd really like to see more of the tape to tape Walkman.
Any chance of doing a video on it please?
+Dan Xepha unfortunately it's non-working. Perhaps one day I'll take it apart.
So it becomes a repair video.
I'd be happy with that!
+Techmoan I guess "non-working" is the natural state of that particular Walkman after a couple years. I tried to repair mine, and the electronics inside are so cramped you'd need a microscope to solder anything. The mechanical parts are built to last until warranty expiration + 1 day. Really, some of the last-century stuff is UGLY inside as it's beautiful on the outside.
Any progress on this? I'd really like to see a more in depth look of the device.
I love this channel and the reviews of old tech that no one knows and probably for a good reason.
Honestly, that's a brilliant idea for the time.
I used to see those used in advertisements for cassette decks, but I never actually new what they were beyond being expensive TEAC stuff. Thanks for the explanation.
You just buy 1.
I bought one of those new, back in the eighties. I agree with you, it looks cool but I couldn't be bothered swapping over the tapes, so it's got the same reel loaded all the time.
But it still looks amusing in the tape deck!
Great Video Techmoan , Thanks
Arash Shahi you're welcome. Getting a simple thanks is very rare nowadays so it's appreciated.
These things go for ridiculously high prices on eBay, etc. They are nice to look at - but for that purpose (and much easier handling) I prefer those cool pure-white ceramic cassettes from Sony.
that looks like SOOOOOOO much extra work. this is why they invented the cassette tape in the first place.
That Sony WM-W800 unit at the end is RAD!!! That would of been a cool Walkman to Carry around back in the 80's or early 90's!!!
You can't copy music onto tapes! What are you trying to do, kill the music industry? Damn pirates!
:P
-Hurry... hurry, Bruce Willis will be *here*.
-I can hear helicopters...
On(c)e upon an old TV show.
Thanks for clearing this up for me! I saw one of these in the movie Iron Eagle WAY back in the day and always wondered what was being used.
Yikes, among other problems, I'd think this would also make the heads dirty quickly because of the oils from people's fingers touching the tape leader...another advantage of standard cassettes.
I loved cassette tapes and this definitely looks great and having your own custom color and custom Caddy looks nice but if I was in a hurry it would be too much for 12 year old me at the time. I still have many cassettes I hold but never use, but I'd love to buy something like this, protective clips and carry case and all. It's a lot more "compact" than a "compact cassette"
When clicking the thumbnail I fell in love with what I saw, but now that I'm at the end I have to agree with you that it's a stupid idea, although it does look cool.
Manny Calavera Stupid and cool often go hand in hand.
Techmoan Last update on that Foscam IPcamera in the birdhouse; oi61.tinypic.com/2eupyxj.jpg
Proof that it can be done with a camera like this, although sometimes the camera crashes and it starts doing the "look around" thingy, the mother'll get mad but then after a minute she starts minding her own business again.
Perhaps interesting to people who ask you for this if it's any good to keep an eye on the nature around the house.
I LOVE this I love how fiddly it is. I love how slow it is to reload and I love how it looks. I need to find one of these.
Very cleaver title, my friend.
Atka59 Thanks - I thought it was apt - I couldn't decide whether or not to preface it with the word 'Needlessly" - but I thought it might be a bit of a spoiler.
Techmoan
Your decision was spot on; for the intelligent viewer, which I suspect comprises 90% of your subs, "Needlessly" might have been a bit redundant. Primarily because they would surmise that aspect at first glance anyway. Your clever reinvention of a familiar cliche syncopates cometically well off of that initial internal impression. As you obviously determined any preface to that gem would have throw it out of cadence and rendered it somewhat less pleasing.
Atka59 wot!!??
milehigh61 Wot, no kidding. I remember misspelling "comically" and then not finding a correct spell checker choice, but I have no idea how I ended up with "cometically". Actually, having read my second comment over, I should have followed Mat's lead and just left the initial comment alone and unadulterated. Thanks for calling my attention to an obviously over thought and not well explained comment on comedic timing! LOL
Atka59 also no 'a' in clever
The first Walkman with the mini reels is the coolest thing I have ever seen.
Good lord, I thought swapping out and flipping over regular cassettes were a pain in the ass! Having to unspool and re-spool these little reels? Ugh!
Unless one can buy empty shells or "caddies", to load once and leave it, this would drive me nuts.
Nifty for novelty only. Not practical, and I doubt sound quality has much to boast either.
Blackie Nuff I think you could change the tape inside/ buy ones with higher quality tape, I think it looks kinda cool but I'd probably just put them in separate tapes of their own to avoid the tediousness of swapping them out
Honestly, if i owned a *massive* cassette collection, I think it'd end up being more economical to have a few open cassette caddies + a huge amount of these reels than a huge bundle of cassettes.
I do remember Teac keeping the idea of the reel for their basic cassettes. They were internal. It saved the tape from miss winding and rubbing against the inner wall of the cartridge.
It looks so cool I'd frame it and hang up on my wall.
Maybe in some kind of motorised frame that would spin them. Now that would be a sexy display piece.
Even though it's old tech, those gold tape wheels looks nice as heck spinning in that good condition Sony Walkman, I'd use that thing!
Has anyone told you sound like Ringo Starr?
now that you mention it...
+BAD BIKER BENNY
Yeah, he actually does!
P.S.: Sorry for the lateness of my reply.
+BAD BIKER BENNY Kind of a cross b/w Ringo Starr and Mike Rutherford of Genesis.
+Big MITTY so the real one then....
+BAD BIKER BENNY Ringo Starr with a cold
I would' mind to buying even these days the system O'cassette from TEAC, if it cupid be still available. It looks just AWESOME, even if it sounds the same like a regular CC. In television station, where I worked for 11 years, of being a single tape operator, who could save emotion of the prerecorded program on video cassette, when tape inside it was broken or damaged. Only I had a delicate hands - on knowledge, to open the case, fix the tape and put everything back again in the right order, to make "broken" cassette playable. The rest of the people were just looking of what I was doing, and they couldn't believe, that video cassette would be working perfectly back again, after my fix - up !!!! EVERYTHING comes with the little knowledge :o))
Cool but too much too mess with.
too ✅
too ❌
to*
No worse then the "mess" to play an LP
I believe you are correct that these were not offered here in the states. I seem to remember seeing them on the cover of stereo and audio/video magazines. I also believe somebody also marketed look-a-likes, cassettes that appeared to be reel to reels in a cassette case but actually were just ordinary cassette tapes. It seems that in the end, the Teac reel to reel cassettes were cool to look but nobody wanted to mess around threading tape.
Is this James May talking?!
+jitterball sounds just like James May!
I had this back when it came out, it was fiddly, but once you got the hang of it, it was still to much trouble to switch around!
Did nobody invent a giant cassette with 10" spools to replace open-reel decks?
There was a thing called "EL Cassette".
Largest cassette ruclips.net/video/1WQbJ0VFrFQ/видео.html
Back in the day, I was always playing around with cassettes when they jammed or the felt bit fell out or the cases cracked. Fiddling around using this system would be second nature, and it looks cool, too. Shame no one thought to invent auto spooling though. Still have hundreds of cassettes - some now over 40 years old and amazingly still working! The 80's chrome dioxides especially still sound pretty good. Luckily my car, built in 2004, still has a working radio cassette deck that was fitted during production. So plenty of old stuff to listen to on trips.
I can't believe this is actually a thing that someone thought would be a good idea. It just isn't. Okay, yes, it looks cool... but I'm a practical sort of guy. 3 seconds to pull out one cassette, slap in another, press play. Done. If I had to do this every time I wanted to listen to music in the 80s, I would have stopped listening to music in the 80s, and resumed in the late 90s when CDs became popular.
That said, I used to take my cassettes apart, invert the reels, and play them backwards to see what the sounded like. Thankfully, my parents only thought I was experimental, and not possessed by the devil.
These were VERY handy for a once profitable niche. Bring in your broken audio (or data) cassettes and we'd have you redubed to a new cassette in no time. We popped cases and swapped reels until this critter. All that was left was correcting tracks for breaks after repair and collecting the fee.
Cassettes were the end of the market for repair and we all knew it but this little product did keep us in it a tad longer.
Vinyl was our heyday. The 8 track made things more disposable and while there was work with them, it was too little. The flip side of that was the fact that the world had moved on to disposable media and when something meant value to someone they would once again be willing to have it saved (the only reason this little product was useful).
BlokeOzzie I'd have went back to vinyl, lol.
With that logic why would you use a cassette at all when they need to be rewound? I would have stuck with vinyl.
Well, regular cassettes don't need to be rewound, you just flip them over and play side two, unless you have an automatic reverse tape player and it just changes direction on it's own when it reaches the end of one side
Rob Fraser Because even in the 80s, we had the need for portable music.
Techmoan’s videos are pure fun for the aged audiophile while they’re informative for all regarding vintage sound gear. Now, I never saw one of the Teac O’Casse cassettes in person so other than a picture I learned more here. The idea is far out, too much in fact! The look is the best ever for a cassette however. In fact if cassettes looked more like this I think they would have lasted longer in the marketplace. I mean I’d rather look at this than even the best metal from Maxell or TDK.
I was losing my patience just watching you try to unfurl that reel :-0
I was under the impression that tape which is analog had a broader and better signal than the digital more convenient devices of today. Today most can't distinguish the difference and convenience has won the audio signal war. Watching your video made me wonder if you could expand on that since you seem to have a better understanding than myself? Enjoyable video covering this concept, yes alot of tinkering with loose tape. Thank you, John
Actually the 8-Track beat the shit out of any cassette tape in sound quality
+TruAnRksT it did....until it didn't. You see whilst 8-track tape formulations didn't really improve since the 60s, the cassette got chrome then metal, Dolby c, s, hx-pro. I've made a video about 8-tracks and one about compact cassettes...both these are in the HiFi playlist on my channel.
+TruAnRksT are you insane? 8 tracks sounded mufffled and jittery from the always unstable transport mechanism.
+chieftp You needed the obligatory pack of matches to get the fidelity :)
Russ Greene
oh yes, that would decrease the wow and flutter by a percentage of 5 decibel hectars.
+chieftp
LOL well it did have it's draw backs but when it was playing good? Only damaged tapes sounded "muffled", back during the Vietnam conflict I had a portable that used eight D cells and it really cranked out the jams. In stereo with speakers that could be separated up to 6 feet. Later I had an 8-track in my car that made other car radios at the time sound like shit. It had a whopping 8W per channel! LOL.
Yes I agree there were some technical issues with the format but the actual tracks themselves if separated from the rest of the tape, for some reason sounded better than the tape used in commercial cassettes. Cassette tapes have always sounded a little flat and stage-less to me. All varieties.
Wow.
I remember when I would have to take apart cassettes that had gotten messed up, and put them back together again. With this thing, I could have the pleasure of doing that every time I wanted to play a different album. What a great idea! They should have included a pencil as a winding tool though!
I love this type of useless crap lol
***** Maybe one day in 2040 he'll be reviewing the Apple Watch ;-)
James Grimwood :D epic comment
James Grimwood Or umpteen other gadgets from today
In 2040, they will have a ton of silly Kickstarter gadgets to review...
+Baerchenization "Can you imagine that back in 2015 people payed hundreds of dollars to get one? That's just silly!"
I remember you could buy the reel to reel tapes but you did not swap them out like these as they were sealed units, I got them because they looked much better in my system than normal tapes.
Хорошо, красиво, удобно, но поздно!!! :))) Прожитый день!!! :)))
This looks amazing, beautiful technology!
made in japan..china made is a copy
This is what massive amounts of cocaine use will do to your products and profits.
I got the Teac Reels in a closed cassette. I like it.Threading the tape is a pain at the bottom, which I have experience with repairing and swapping reels in regular cassettes.
Wow! That thing looks like some hipster's attempt at making cassette tapes relevant again. Seriously, you could have told me they were funding it on indiegogo or kickstarter and I would have believed you.
bummer6 i owned one of those things back in the 80's. It died out because it is, was, and will.always be a stupid idea. The whole point of cassette was not to have to go through all this nonsense. It came and went. And it's really pointlessness when TDK and BASF (if you had the right machine) had the best tape.
A variant of them were available here in Sweden for a while too. But it was a cassette with the same wheels built-in.
What a utterly useless but awesome looking piece of tech!
I had 3 of those cassette cases and a load of reels, I loved these things.
I didn't know these even existed. Amazing. Great channel thanks!
My God what a stupid stupid idea. Wasn't a hit, was it?
+Leo Berger ...and that's exactly the reason why this video exists. No point making a video about something everyone has seen and used.....don't see too much demand for a videos about a Scotch 180 min VHS tape.
+Techmoan I demand a video about a Scotch 180 min VHS tape
+Leo Berger ROFL